Asia Pacific insights from the Flexible Work and Rewards Survey
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About the Survey
As organisations manage through phases of the ongoing crisis, many are recalibrating strategies and programs tied to work, rewards and the employee experience by embracing workplace flexibility and prioritising organsational resilience and agility.
Our findings reveal that the sharp uptick in the number of employees working from home or using other flexible work arrangements is expected to persist through the first quarter of 2021.
Before last year, only one in four organisations in Asia Pacific had a formal policy to manage alternative work arrangements, and currently three in 10 still lack one; of these employers, 60% are planning or considering adopting one. While job function and health concerns are the most common criteria to determine eligibility for using alternative work arrangements, over one in three respondents said that all employees will be eligible to use them.
The immediate budgetary impacts of these changes are likely to include a reduction in real estate and commuting expenses, but very few respondents expect significant increases in pay and benefit expenses over the next three years.
While most respondents (55%) did not expect to see immediate changes in how people are paid, and only three in 10 organisations recognise that new requirements for work require a hybrid model for rewards and pay, over half of respondents in the region say rewards and pay philosophy are shifting due to new ways of working. Almost half (47%) of employers recognise that health and wellbeing programs need to change to provide security necessary to support workers in a more agile and flexible workplace in the future, and 36% answered the same for retirement and financial wellbeing programs.
The changing workplace will require changes in the role of the manager, job architecture, and pay and benefits.
In the longer term, the changing workplace will affect the business, which will require changes in the role of the manager, job architecture, and pay and benefits. Currently, only 15% say that their job architecture supports a flexible workforce to a very great extent.
A dramatically reconfigured workplace and workforce will require agile leadership that effectively balances employee and business performance needs, supports new ways of working and powers new sources of organisational value, leveraging digital capabilities and the new sources of value they create.
Employers expect the proportion of their full-time employees working from home to be almost 10 times where it was three years ago.
At over one in three organisations, all employees will remain eligible for using alternative work arrangement.
Only one in seven employers think that current job architecture and job levelling process support developing a flexible and agile workforce.
Only 12% of employers have an integrated digital and business strategy.
Only three in 10 recognise that new work requirements need a hybrid model for rewards and pay.
* Percentages for organisational and manager effectiveness indicate “to a great or very great extent”.
** Percentages indicate “to a great or very great extent”.